Streams

Gun Shy

For years, gun ownership has been one of the most persistent and polarizing aspects of America's "culture war." But have the media done justice to both sides of the issue? Some journalists have admitted that mainstream media tend to stereotype hunters and gun collectors as raging lunatics. Which, in turn, has led many gun owners to believe in media conspiracies to repeal the Second Amendment. OTM's John Solomon sets out to find some common ground.

Transcript

BOB GARFIELD: Ever since election day, the media have been wringing their hands over failing to understand how much cultural values mattered to voters. Among the most polarizing issues - gun ownership. Media tend to stereotype sportsmen, collectors and hobbyists as raging gun nuts, and gun owners tend to see media conspiracies to repeal the Second Amendment right to bear arms. OTM's John Solomon went out in the field - literally - to find some common ground.

JOHN SOLOMON: When it comes to gun policy, the National Rifle Association and the New York Times Editorial Board are usually firing broadsides at each other. Now, the NRA has invited the editorial board to go shooting with them, and the Times public editor Daniel Okrent believes they should.

DANIEL OKRENT: I think it would be wonderful. I think it'd be a really, really good thing for the readers of the New York Times.

JOHN SOLOMON: In a column last summer, Okrent wrote that gun owners are, (quote) "among the groups the Times treats as strange objects to be examined on an laboratory slide. For them," he continued, "a walk through this paper can make you feel you're traveling in a strange and forbidding world."

DANIEL OKRENT: It plays out in the paper in coverage that is not empathetic. I think journalism requires a certain empathy. You have to understand what the person's position is and why the person feels that way. And, on gun issues, I feel, generally speaking, the Times writers and editors who address these issues cannot or choose not to - I think it's more cannot - find that empathetic connection to the person who really wants his gun.

JOHN SOLOMON: That lack of empathy is not limited to blue state media, according to Mike Needs, ombudsman of the Akron Beacon Journal. He wrote a column this past fall suggesting that journalists, even in his red state of Ohio, have a blind spot when it comes to guns.

MIKE NEEDS: When I walk through the newsroom, and I talk about what I'm hearing from people in the community - "Why don't you have more hunting season coverage?" - the reaction is that, well, I don't think we need to do that because that's not something that they're interested in.

JOHN SOLOMON: Needs counts only one hunter on a floor of 170 newsroom employees; that, despite the fact that 4 in 10 Americans say they own at least one gun. It's a disconnect that makes this man's job much easier.

HARRY JACOBS: How you guys doing today? Everybody a member of the NRA?

JOHN SOLOMON: On a recent Saturday morning, Harry Jacobs, an NRA membership recruiter, was manning the organization's booth at a gun show in the small Eastern Pennsylvania town of Jim Thorpe.

HARRY JACOBS: Would you like to get some information? Give you 10 dollars off on the hat.

JOHN SOLOMON: A 58 year old turkey hunter named Dick offers a representative opinion of what gun owners think they're getting for their 15 dollar NRA membership fee. He believes the media are out to take guns away from private citizens, and the NRA is the only obstacle in its way.

HARRY JACOBS: They don't look at the gun collector or the hunter as a law-abiding citizen. I mean I think they're working together to disarm the American public, and I mean that's their objective, and we need the NRA, and we need the people to stick together, or that's what's going to happen.

JOHN SOLOMON: Nearby, Kenny, a cherubic 54 year old, has a rifle in his right hand and a homemade placard advertising its features hanging around his neck. A lifelong deer hunter, Kenny says he's never seen a realistic depiction of hunting in the mainstream press.

KENNY JACOBS: The fun part is the anticipation, the scouting, the, the family gatherings, the strategy sessions, the, the B.S.-ing and all those things. The going out with your brothers and family members and good friends, getting together - and that's something that's never covered by media.

JOHN SOLOMON: Like many men here, Kenny fully supports the NRA's opposition to gun regulation, because he fears any concessions will lead down a slippery slope to a complete ban. Another man says I should especially appreciate that position, since no institution talks more about the potential for a slippery Bill of Rights slope than the press. He suggests I look up a 1994 Washington Post editorial which called the Assault Weapons Ban largely symbolic, but added "Its virtue will be if it turns out to be, as hoped, a stepping stone to broader gun control." To many Post readers, that may seem like throwaway boilerplate, but to gun owners, it serves to reinforce their suspicion that the media's ultimate objective is less to reduce illegal gun use than it is to take away all their guns.

DENNIS HENNIGAN: It does not help when you have editorial writers make statements that appear to be hostile to gun ownership per se.

JOHN SOLOMON: Dennis Hennigan is the legal director for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

DENNIS HENNIGAN: That just plays into the NRA's hands, and it allows them to again reinforce their case that there is this conspiracy, essentially, against gun ownership and that they are the guardians of freedom.

JOHN SOLOMON: In fact, research by Brian Anse Patrick, author of The NRA and The Media, found a strong statistical correlation between negative editorials in the top US newspapers and spikes in NRA membership. "Ironically," Patrick says, "the strong gun control rhetoric hampers the cause by alienating and energizing gun owners."

BRIAN ANSE PATRICK: More bad press equals more NRA members. I'll put it gladly - if it weren't for bad press, NRA couldn't possibly be where it is today.

JOHN SOLOMON: Just as helpful to the NRA as bad press is careless press. One notable example occurred two years ago during a live gun demonstration, set up by CNN Miami Bureau Chief John Zarella. The story was pegged to the congressional debate on the Assault Weapons Ban. Zarella arranged for sheriffs' deputies to shoot a variety of weapons that he said would become legal without the ban. [GUNS FIRING]

MAN: Now, that was semi-automatic. [SEVERAL SPEAK AT ONCE]

MAN: Now, this is automatic. [AUTOMATIC GUN FIRE]

MAN: Wow. I had obliterated those blocks.

JOHN SOLOMON: The problem with Zarella's demonstration was that the fully automatic machine gun he referred to had been banned for public use since 1934, and therefore it had nothing to do with the legislation before Congress. Gun owners may have also found one of Zarella's questions to a sheriff to be somewhat loaded.

JOHN ZARELLA: Clearly this has nothing to do with right and bear - to bear arms; this is clearly an issue of - there is no place on the street for a weapon that can do that kind of destruction.

JOHN SOLOMON: Several days later, CNN felt it necessary to have host Miles O'Brien issue a rare on air clarification.

MILES O'BRIEN: We reviewed that demonstration and decided that a more detailed report would better explain this complex issue.

ANDREW ARULANANDAM: I don't feel that most reporters are terribly biased. I think that there is a lack of understanding when it comes to covering the issue of firearms.

JOHN SOLOMON: Andrew Arulanandam is the NRA's director of public affairs.

ANDREW ARULANANDAM: It's very difficult for folks who have never fired a firearm or have no desire to fire a firearm or no desire to go hunting to understand the culture.

JOHN SOLOMON: To gun control advocates, the press has mistakenly lumped gun control in with cultural values issues such as gay marriage. In fact, according to CNN's Paul Begala, journalists' lack of experience in the field has caused them to miss the more valid link between hunting and the environment. Begala, who has been a hunter far longer than he's been in the media, says the press portrays the sportsman vote solely in terms of gun legislation, when government decisions on the environment, such as wetlands preservations, will likely have a far greater impact on the lives of hunters.

PAUL BEGALA: The most powerful environmentalists I know are hunters, because they see firsthand - it is not an abstraction for them. They actually spend time in the outdoors; they want to take the children to hunt and fish in the same place that their father took them.

JOHN SOLOMON: The NRA's ability to frame the current discussion comes after years of self-inflicted media problems, according to Michael Bane, who hosts several gun-related shows on cable TV's Outdoor Network, including the NRA-produced American Rifleman.

MICHAEL BANE: The pro-gun side was virtually media-dyslexic. We had no idea what the media wanted from us. We didn't know how to give it to 'em. And, besides that, we thought they were out to get us.

JOHN SOLOMON: Bane's side is now taking a more open stance with the press. He created the Aiming for Accuracy program for the National Shooting Sports foundation, an industry trade group. It brings reporters to ranges to do some target shooting and learn more about guns. As part of my own effort to learn more, I accepted an invitation from Todd Smith, the editor of the hunting and fishing magazine Outdoor Life, to shoot sporting clays at the sprawling Orvis Sandanona grounds about 80 miles north of New York City. On arrival, I was equipped with yellow ear plugs, a black shooting vest, orange protective glasses, and a brown Caesar Guerini 20-gauge shotgun. An Orvis instructor, Jim Dobbs, showed me how to hold the gun, its butt to the crook of my right arm, my face up on the gun barrel, and how to load the two yellow rounds - not bullets, as I initially called them. Before we shot, Jim previewed the arc of the two birds - actually black and orange clay discs - that would be propelled into the air one after another.

JIM DOBBS: The secret with this is to look up high, pick up the bird, and always have the gun in front and under, and follow through.

JOHN SOLOMON: I approached a wood stand, I loaded the gun and called for the first clay to be launched.

JOHN SOLOMON: By the end, I had fired 90 rounds, total. My arms were exhausted, and my cheekbone was bruised from the unfamiliar shotgun recoil. The scorecard said I had actually hit about 40 percent of the clays, but that was not the only surprise of the day for me. I was particularly struck by how obsessed everyone was with safety. Todd Smith, from Outdoor Life, said that's a common reaction of his neophyte guests.

TODD SMITH: It's not about shooting up the countryside. We went out - we were safe - we had a really great time - we had a beautiful day - and that, in and of itself I think is, is a misconception that most mainstream journalists never see. I mean you had a great time today, did you not?

JOHN SOLOMON: [LAUGHS] I did. I even hit something.

JOHN SOLOMON: That was also the experience at the Arizona Daily Star, one media organization that has made a significant effort to improve its gun coverage. The Tucson-based paper sent a number of reporters out shooting with expert trainers, and it held an extensive briefing on gun issues for all employees. Executive editor, Bobbie Jo Buel.

BOBBIE JO BUEL: We had two guys show up with hundreds of weapons, and these guys just talked about the basics of firearms. They took them apart, they allowed employees to take them apart and handle them…

JOHN SOLOMON: As a result, Buel says the Daily Star is now making far fewer mistakes. It also changed the nature of the paper's relationship with some of its most interested readers.

BOBBIE JO BUEL: I remember, a couple of months later, I was driving down the street one day, and I had talk radio on, and I almost drove off the road. I heard one of these people who had been our biggest critic, and he's still very critical of our editorial page opinions about gun control, but he was on talk radio, and a person called in and started in on the Arizona Daily Star and our agenda and how unfair we are and-and he defended us and said "You know, they make mistakes sometimes, in the news pages, but I think they're really trying to get it right."

JOHN SOLOMON: Considering the problems with the media's coverage of guns, the willingness of the Daily Star to acknowledge its mistakes and attempt to learn from them gives the rest of us in the press a nice target to aim for. For On the Media, this is John Solomon. [THEME MUSIC UP & UNDER]

BOB GARFIELD: 58:00 That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Megan Ryan, Tony Field, Jamie York and Mike Vuolo, and edited, this week, by--- me. Dylan Keefe is our technical director and Jennifer Munson our engineer. We had help from Susanna Dilliplane and Nick Gilewicz, and editing help from Jeff Rogers. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl. Katya Rogers is our senior producer and Dean Cappello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. This is On the Media, from NPR. Brooke Gladstone will be back next week. I'm Bob Garfield. [THEME MUSIC TAG]

copyright 2005 WNYC Radio

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